Gulf War Vets Face More Illness

By Emma Ross Copyright 1999 Associated Press January 15, 1999

Persian Gulf War veterans have a rate of general ill health at least twice as high as forces who stayed home or were sent to Bosnia, according to a new study of British troops.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, published a study this week that confirms what previously has been reported in studies of U.S. and Canadian veterans that while no definable disease could be found, going to the Persian Gulf in 1991 affected troops' health.

The study of 8,195 soldiers, sailors and pilots the first to compare Gulf War veterans with troops who served in another hazardous conflict around the same time is the largest of symptoms to date.

The men, half of whom had retired from the military, filled out questionnaires about their current health.

They all reported a variety of 59 ailments, including chronic fatigue, hair loss, rashes, headaches, joint pain, memory loss, heart problems and nervous system disorders.

There was hardly any difference between the Bosnia troops and men who served at the time of the Gulf War but were not deployed.

Regardless of the ailment, however, vets who served in the Persian Gulf were about twice as likely to complain of it than the other two groups studied, the researchers said.

"The evidence is unequivocal that going to the Gulf affects your health," said Dr. Simon Wessely, one of the researchers from King's College at the University of London.

The researchers don't know why ailments were more common in Gulf War vets, but said the study shows there is no single cause, either physical or psychological, and that attempts to look for a "smoking gun" will not succeed.

"We have to look at a multitude of causes and their interactions," Wessely said.

The researchers also found that hazards of war ranging from using pesticides and seeing dead bodies to getting diesel fuel on your skin were linked to more symptoms, regardless of whether the men had served in the Gulf or somewhere else.

The study did find a slight increase in ill health in those who had vaccines against biological threats such as anthrax or plague. Receiving multiple vaccinations against routine infections also was linked to a modest increase in illness, but only in the Persian Gulf group and not in Bosnia.

In an editorial in the Lancet, a scientist with the National Institutes of Health called the study one of the most definitive conducted to date and said it added weight to the argument that no unique "Gulf War Syndrome" exists.

In his editorial, Stephen E. Straus, chief of the laboratory of clinical investigation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, drew parallels between the ailments cited by Gulf War vets and soldiers who fought in World War I.

"Although the possibility of some still unappreciated environmental factor cannot be dismissed entirely," he wrote, "the Gulf War seems to differ from others only in a quantitative sense and in the intensity of public discourse about it."

But Dr. Robert Haley, an epidemiologist at University of Texas Medical Center who believes a particular "Gulf War syndrome" exists, criticized the research. He said the scientists' questions were too vague, so it was not surprising they found the same symptoms in all of the veterans.

"They found questions that by their nature are not unique. They didn't ask the right questions," he said.

Haley's research on a small number of patients has previously concluded that some Gulf War veterans suffer from distinct symptom clusters caused by chemical poisoning and that some may suffer neurological damage from nerve gas or pesticides.

Comments on this posting?
Click here to post a public comment on the Trash Talk Bulletin Board.
Click here to send a private comment to the Junkman.

---

Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of Steven J. Milloy.

Copyright © 1998 Citizens for the Integrity of Science. All rights reserved on original material. Material copyrighted by others is used either with permission or under a claim of "fair use." Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.